BEAUTIFUL HANDS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1879

BEAUTIFUL HANDS.

We think the list of adages would be incomplete without one something like this: “He who has a beautiful heart has a beautiful hand.” Beautiful are the hands engaged in helping the needy, wiping away the mourner’s tears, and scattering happiness over the earth. Worthy of praise were the hands that framed the Constitution of our country. The slave sees beauty in the hand that unbinds his chains. Therefore, beautiful were his hands who wrote the emancipation proclamation,—beautiful even while pointing to the dark cloud which for weary years hung over our land; for they pointed also to the silver lining with assurances that the morning of peace would dawn. Beautiful are the hands of those who administer to the sick in camp or hospital, holding to their lips the needed food or medicine, bathing their fevered brows, supporting their weary heads, or gently covering the sleeping dust with earth, writing their names above the graves, and sending to friends the last “good-bye.” Beautiful are the hands of the teacher, held forth to assist those who would climb the hill of science. The records of the great and good of earth are the holding up of their hands to show us the way to wisdom, greatness, and purity. Beautiful were the hands of Jesus, placed on the eyes of the blind, resting on the heads of children in blessing, or raised to heaven in prayer. May we do such deeds that our hands may be free from stains, and we become inheritors of the promise. He that hath clean hands and a pure heart shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, shall stand in his holy place,—Selected.